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Sunday, August 23, 2009

Scott Johnson at Powerline blog has posted some comments from Professor Paul Rahe of Hillsdale College.

Why are the Democrats in such trouble?I think that the answer is three-fold.

First, as I argued in my last Powerline (post, the so-called "stimulus bill" was passed in both the House and the Senate in a manner suggestive of tyranny. It was written in camera with the help of a legion of lobbyists, and it was presented and shoved through before anyone in Congress even had a chance to read it, much less think about it, and the same argument could be made concerning the passage of the cap-and-trade bill in the House and the Obama administration's handling of the bailout and the bankruptcy proceedings of Chrysler and General Motors.

Second, the first of these bills was an obvious scam - a massive pay-off to Democratic party constituencies at the expense of the American taxpayer on a scale that guarantees much higher taxes before long and that almost certainly will drive up interest rates. In the long run, it is not a stimulus bill in any shape or form. It is the sort of spending certain to retard growth.

By now, of course, everyone - apart from those so partisan that they believe every lie foisted upon them by the party apparat and those who flack for it at CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and the like - understands as much. They recognize that all of the talk, dripping with compassion, about the supposed health care crisis and the need to cover the uninsured was a cover for an attempt to do away with Medicare and replace it with something less costly. And this prospect they do not like it one bit.

There is a lot more from Professor Rahe at the Powerline Blog, go read it all.